


Collection of Zutara Pieces

by dreamoverdrive



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 15:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4441292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamoverdrive/pseuds/dreamoverdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of separate zutara works based on prompts such as Maelstrom and Happenstance, as well as other assorted AU's and plot ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Happenstance

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these will be prompts from zutara week and others will be random ideas I had for this pairing!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zutara Week Prompt: Happenstance

Katara was a firm believer in coincidence. 

She didn’t usually put much faith in frivolous ideas, but there was a small, romantic part of her that loved to believe that somewhere, somehow, the universe was taking care of her and guiding her through her life. And occasionally, Katara found that the universe liked to drag rather than guide. 

She certainly hadn’t planned on bumping into him for the umpteenth time that week, and neither had she meant for it to go so badly. She had just been transferred to a new publishing center that was one of the many places of business housed in a large industrial skyscraper. She’d go as far as to guess that thousands of people came through the elevators every week, that hundreds upon hundreds made the daily trek to their offices through the honeycomb of floors and cubicles. 

There was absolutely no logical explanation for her having seen him

every

single

day.

Today was different. He wasn’t just standing next to her in the elevator in his crisp suit or shuffling behind her in the line for the only decent cappuccino machine in the lobby. He was sprawled out on the sidewalk in front of her, a tray of drinks soaking through his white button up and slowly coloring his bright red tie a dull purple. 

“Oh my God,” she mumbled. She couldn’t tell if she had hit him or if he had hit her, but somehow they had walked straight into each other, literally feet from the revolving doors of the building. And now her chiffon blouse would forever bear the stains of her lost chai tea latte, and the bottom of her pencil skirt would forever look like it had been dragged over concrete, because it had, and—

“Oh my god.” He was looking up at her, an utterly mortified look on his face. Red was starting in his cheeks and spreading down into his neck and out into his ears. “I am so—“

“It’s fine.”

It really wasn’t, and her voice was too abrupt and irate to have been very reassuring, but she wasn’t up for sitting on the sticky sidewalk on a mid July New York morning and trying to navigate this conversation with an absurdly attractive man. She tried to briskly dust off her sides but her fingers came away sticky with coffee and syrup. 

“I—“

“Look, it’s seriously fine.”

That came out like a threat more than anything else, more like an, ‘I dare you to try and talk to me again because I’ve already decided this didn’t happen.’  
He obviously didn’t get it because he started again, and this time too quickly for her to cut him off. 

“I’m really sorry but I don’t know why you weren’t looking up.”

Her eyes snapped to him and an eyebrow lifted. “What was that?”

To his credit, he didn’t flinch or shrink away from her glare that she had been perfecting since age nine. His chin just jutted out and he looked at her in stubborn embarrassment. “I really don’t know why you wouldn’t look up.”

Katara thought back to the moments before it had happened. She remembered glancing up and catching his eye, feeling her face burn like the sidewalk below her feet, and then pointedly glaring down at the tips of her shoes. She wasn’t interested in developing a crush on some unnamed office worker, not when the last one on Jet had gone so badly. Had she been too irritated to even notice that imminent collision was seconds away? Obviously. Not that she as going to admit it to him.

“Well, if you noticed that I was occupied, why did you walk into me?”

“Well if you had noticed that I was occupied, then maybe you wouldn’t have walked into me.”

“Excuse me if I’m wrong, but I really don’t see anything pressing for you to have been occupied with, or is carrying a tray of drinks usually your hardest task of the day?”

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline and his jaw dropped, as if it was the first time he’d been told off in months. He gaped and Katara enjoyed a small moment of triumph before he said, “I didn’t realize that the tips of shoes could be so fascinating. Care to explain why you were blushing at them? Or was there another reason for that?”

“Listen here,” Katara hissed, all semblance of propriety going to the wind, “I think you’re under the impression that I was interested in you, when all that I was interested in was getting to my job without ruining a seventy dollar outfit, you pompous little asshat—“

“Oh, I’m the asshat!

“You are the asshat,” she gritted, “Isn’t that what I just said? No wonder they send you for coffee!”

“Hello, there.”

Katara swiveled on the sidewalk, neck craning to see who had spoken behind her. She felt the blood rush from her face when she saw it was her new boss. He was looking down at the two of them, conveniently still seated on the ground and arguing like middle schoolers. He inclined his head to her.

“I understand if you’ll be late to the office, Katara.”

Suddenly, the man across from her started with, “This was entirely my fault—“  
“I’m sure,” her boss said, grinning at him. He nodded to the two of them before heading through the revolving doors with all the other people that had been skirting around them.

Katara looked back at the man who was now staring mournfully at his soaked messenger bag. She couldn’t help herself as giggles started to bubble out of her throat. He stared as she started to cackle.

“What’s so funny?”

“I can’t believe it,” she gasped, “My fist week of work and—“

“I’m really sorry about that. I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of your boss.”

“No,” she said, finally catching her breath. “That wasn’t your fault. I mean, I’d probably be livid right now if I hadn’t been up till 2 am last night finishing a presentation. Consider yourself lucky that I’m suffering from intense sleep-deprivation—“

“Would you like to get another coffee?”

Katara came to a screeching halt, looking up into his suddenly hopeful eyes. She swallowed, remembering why she had been so mad at him in the first place, how ridiculous everything was, why she shouldn’t get herself in another bad situation—

“I’ll pay?”

And those were the magic words. 

She heaved a sigh and hauled herself to her feet. She offered him a sticky hand with a grudging smile.

“Fine, but only because I’m determined for something good to have come out of this.”

He grinned and let her pull him up. There was a crackling sound as his pants that had been dried to the sidewalk peeled off the concrete. She burst out laughing again and he joined in, reluctantly at first, but soon he was laughing nearly as hard. 

She couldn’t help but believe in coincidence, and she was never one to turn down someone the universe had shoved right under her nose.


	2. Maelstrom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zutara Week Prompt: Maelstrom

Katara knew he would be fine.

She knew it in her bones. When she sent her water skimming over his skin, she knew he would be ok. His pulse wasn’t spiking, there was no sickening sense of there being something wrong when she probed his chest or head. He wasn’t in a coma. Whenever she bent on people with comas she came away dizzy and disoriented.

She was anything but disoriented now. She was painfully lucid, everything so sharp that it hurt her eyes. The red bedsheets screamed in her face, the silk hangings brushing over her shoulder felt like sandpaper, and she could taste the smell of smoke floating through the window as if she had put something dead and smoldering over her tongue and closed her mouth. She felt like she was going mad.

Her mind kept drifting back to the roaring mess, the final storm for her to weather that night.

The healing process had started with her crouched over his body and whispering furiously— _Zuko, don’t you dare close your eyes_ — as she tried to keep his body going on sheer willpower alone. All his organs seemed to be going through trigger delayed reactions, as if they’d been too surprised by the lightning to do anything until fifteen minutes later. Her water clung to his torso and she tried to spread her energy where it was needed most. She was alerted by a groan from Zuko whenever she shifted too far away from one area and it went back into riot under his skin. Soon she was crying, crying because she was furious that she couldn’t be everywhere at once, that the burns on her own selfish body were distracting her, that he kept watching her with the same benign smile on his face—

_It’s ok, Katara, I know you’re trying your best._

If anything, it was the calm on his face that kept her from screaming. Azula’s lightning had ruined the pace of his heart and there was a small part of it threatening to overthrow the rhythm of the blood in his body. She’d only experienced something like it once before with an old man in an earth kingdom village. His heart had worn out, and part of it had started beating out of time from sheer fatigue. It couldn’t handle the strain, and soon after, it came to a dead stop.

Tears squeezed out of her eyes as she tried to focus her healing energy over Zuko’s heart. His breathing grew shallow and she looked at his face in panic. His lips pressed shut and his eyes closed so tightly that their corners bunched into lines of pain.

“Zuko, Zuko, listen to me—“

He let out a short gasp and she screamed as his heart faltered under her fingertips.

“Zuko! Zuko, please—“

“My chest,” he choked, “something’s wrong.”

“I know, I know, I’m trying to fix it but I need you to—“

“I’m trying, Katara.”

His voice was a thin breath she had to lean forward to hear over the thump of blood in her ears. She nodded and then remembered his eyes were closed. “Keep trying, Zuko, I need you to stay with me now.”

She focused on the beat of his heart like she hadn’t focused on anything before. She pressed down on it with the force of her will. _Beat. Beat in the right way._ Everything faded away behind the roar in her head and the pound of blood against the walls of his arteries. She found the deviant area of muscle that pulsed out of time and ground her teeth. _Obey me. Obey me._ A familiar tug in the pit of her stomach started—like she was bloodbending—and she shuddered as she forced the tissue back into rhythm.

It was done. She gasped, trying to suck in as much air as she could and sagged over him, palms spread over his chest. She laid there for an instant with her cheek pressed against his burning skin, listening to the fast beat of his heart with her ears instead of her bending. It was fast, but it was sound.

She found she was sobbing. She’d spent the whole time crying, but now it wasn’t silent or suppressed. She let the release claw it’s way up her throat and she choked on the sudden flood of tears.

“It’s ok, Katara,” a faint voice said from beneath her.

She straightened, swiping her hands over her eyes. “You almost died, Zuko.” Her voice was quiet. She couldn’t force it above a harsh whisper. She couldn’t tell if she was furious or terrified, but she knew she was mind-numbingly relieved.

There was a long pause as she spread her water back over his torso to check for more problems. The surface glistened in the red light, reflecting the smoke above their heads and the watery outline of her pinched face. She couldn’t bring herself to make eye contact with him.

“But you saved me.”

“I almost couldn’t.”

A hot hand pressed against her cheek. “But you did.”

She shook her head. “I could feel you slipping away. I could feel you leaving—“

“But I didn’t.”

Her eyes flashed to his face. The simplicity of his words infuriated her after everything that had happened, and she was about to tell him so when she saw the soft smile he met her with. It was small and warm and the hand pressed against her cheek swept a shaking thumb over the rise of her cheek.

“I’m here, Katara. Everything is ok.”

She hiccuped and laughed, nearing hysteria. “I can’t believe you did that. Why did you do that?”

“I knew you’d be able to do it.”

“You didn’t,” she snapped, fury returning full force. “You absolutely did not. I didn’t even know I could do it until I felt you stop dying underneath me.”

“It would have been better than watching you die under me. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.”

Tears started to bubble out of her eyes again. “I can’t believe you did that for me.”

“Why not?”

Katara thought that if he hadn’t been inches away from death moments before, she would have punched him. She just shook her head.

“Have I not been clear enough?” 

“Zuko, you aren’t making any sense.”

“I care about you, Katara.” The intensity of his gaze kept her from jabbing back at him with a sharp comeback. “I care about you _a lot._ ”

“I care about you, too, Zuko,” she whispered.

“But do you care in the way I’m speaking of?”

She blinked, trying to process what he had said. He stared up at her, black hair on end, face paler than she thought would be possible on a living human, and yellow eyes large in his face. Everything felt so raw. Energy began to crackle under her skin again. For a moment, she felt as if she had been the one hit with lightning.

“I do.” It was strange to admit out loud, but she’d a vague understanding of her feelings for awhile now and they had only solidified when she saw him glowing with blue light in the air in front of her.

He must have seen something in her face because his small smile widened into a weak grin. “And it took me jumping in front of lightning for you to realize it?”

She glared. “Oh, stop it, you. You’re in no position to be critical.”

At that moment, cries sounded from the palace. The pounding of slippered feet came and Katara jolted back to reality. Brisk hands closed around her arms and pulled her to her feet, dirt and stones showering down from her clothes. She yelped as she was drawn away from Zuko. Water surged back to her arms from the ground and she was ready to fight back when a faint voice called out to her.

“It’s ok, Katara. Let them.”

Her eyes focused on a white stretcher with a sooty black form on it. A hand rose up and waved at her in encouragement. Gradually, the panic seeped away from her limbs and she allowed herself to slump back into the net of arms. The suppressed roaring in her ears caught up with her and grew louder and louder until she was enveloped in a sea of black. She clung to consciousness for one last instant.

He’s ok. He’s going to be ok.

And with the comfort of that knowledge wrapped around her, she slipped away into the darkness.


End file.
